Presentation Formats

The purpose of the Butler URC is to afford undergraduates from schools across the midwest an opportunity to discuss their work with undergraduates and interested faculty from other institutions. Only undergraduate students may submit abstracts and make presentations at the conference. Two types of presentation formats are available, paper sessions and poster sessions. Details of these format types are described below. To make a presentation at the conference, one student (called the presenter) should prepare and submit an abstract which describes the work to be discussed. Although a project may have any number of authors identified with a submitted abstract, only two students are allowed as presenters per submitted abstract. The second speaker should register as the co-presenter, but only the presenter submits the abstract when registering for the conference. That is, only one abstract should be submitted per presentation.

Paper Presentations

A presentation is an oral delivery of your research to an audience.

Most presentations at the Butler URC consist of individual paper presentations. In this format, each abstract submitted will be assigned a 15 minute time slot for the presenter to make an oral presentation of his or her work. Presenters should prepare a 10 to 12 minute oral presentation including time for any overheads, video clips, or other multimedia components they may wish to include. The last few minutes of the time slot should be reserved for questions and discussion. Papers will be scheduled for presentation with other papers submitted in the same topic area. Students should be certain to pick the topic area which is most appropriate for their work.

If you plan to use Powerpoint in your presentation, first check to be sure the equipment is available in the room in which you are scheduled to present. If the equipment is not available, you may bring a projector and labtop with you.

Be sure to have your presentation file ready the night before the conference and upload it to our system. Your presentation will be available on Butler's network in the room in which you are scheduled to present. We do not support floppy or zip disks. If you can not have your presentation file ready by the upload deadline, you should bring your presentation saved on a CD and we will upload it here at our "onsite" help desk in the registration area.

Poster Presentations

A poster is a fixed, visual display of your research. People visit your poster to discuss your work.

Students wishing to make a poster presentation should prepare and submit a brief abstract of their work as described above. In the poster format, presenters will be provided a four (high) by seven (wide) foot (4' X 7') poster board to which they can affix (using the push pins provided) a prepared summary of their work. Each student poster should include a title banner with the names and institutional affiliations of the presenters. The title should be in a large font, preferably with letters which are approximately 3" tall, so it will be readable from a distance. We recommend that all other lettering on the poster be at least 1" tall so it can be easily read by others. A small amount of table space will be available in front of each poster for presenters to make handouts available or for the placement of materials that can not be pinned to the poster board.

Poster sessions will be scheduled for a 50 minute block of time during which presenters are expected to be available at their poster to discuss their work with other conference attendees. The poster session is intended to afford students a relaxed atmosphere where attendees can share their ideas with other students and faculty across a wide variety of disciplines and institutions. They are intended to promote both an increased opportunity for interactions among individuals doing related work, as well as an increased appreciation of the work being done across diverse disciplines. To this end, poster presentations will be grouped by topic areas generally, but we will not follow the more strict divisions typical of the paper presentation sessions.